Preserving the Past for the Present

The witty and devastatingly beautiful rush of words in Terry Allen's poems mimic the way time and memory flood our senses leaving reflections that crystalize a well-lived life. This book is a sum of folk speaking their stories, the words they utter and the ones they can't, or as Allen writes, "everyone communicating / just not very well thank you." This collection is Twain-like in its ironic and humorous look at both relatives and strangers who are as "genuine / as a large glass of oat milk / served next to a heaping plate / of imitation crab" and good "people / we might recognize, if we care to look." Intermixed with the local color of Allen's experience and observations are Pinteresque intimations of the menace others make in the world and the absurdity they leave behind. Throughout, Allen leaves us with a strong sense of a past that shapes the present, in a "world where people / live with mercy and compassion" and where the one word that counts is empathy.

-Janet Reed, author of Blue Exhaust: Poems (FLP, 2019)

Terry Allen's Preserving the Past for the Present is an insightful, funny and bravely observant collection of poems, with so many facets of human experience represented in a powerfully diverse and warmly harmonized accessible style.

-Chad Parmenter, award-winning poet and author of Weston's Unsent Letters to Modotti

With Preserving the Past for the Present, Terry Allen once again brings us his inimitable style as he remarks on the peculiarities of people around us. From the wry humor of "Things You May Not Want to Order at That New Exotic Restaurant" to the somber notes of "Flying Squirrels Can't Really Fly" and "About the Light," his characters and scenes draw the reader into the tales he weaves. In his eponymous poem, he reminds us that we may not know people as well as we think we do. As in "Folktales in the Dark," his writing provides insights that might often escape us but are right before us "if we care to look."

-Ken Gierke, author of Glass Awash and Heron Spirit